I’m a nostalgic person by nature. This time of year brings out all the memory triggers – smells, sights, yearly movies, conversations with family. Thinking back on the gifts I’ve gotten through the years, the most memorable often include music.
As a kid, my cousins and I drew names for gifts. Our family didn’t get together very often since we lived in different parts of the state, so Christmas at my grandmother’s house was a big deal. Christmas when I was eight was huge – the gift from my cousin was The Partridge Family Christmas album! Three of my cousins were slightly older than me, so they talked about songs and bands that were not on my elementary school radar. The Partridge Family, however, was on my TV every Friday night and now I had their album! The songs were Christmas standards, sung by David Cassidy, Shirley Jones and studio musicians. Very pedestrian by grown up standards, but that album meant the world to me. It even had a card attached to the front of the cover that was “signed” by the entire Partridge Family. What did I know about mass produced autographs? I nearly wore that record out playing it well beyond the holidays.
As a teenager, I would often get albums as gifts – Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours, Don Henley’s Building The Perfect Beast, all the albums by Hall & Oates. Music is so easy to gift and so appreciated. I still have an extensive album collection, even though I have most of the music downloaded, because they bring all the great memories to the fore. Reading liner notes was the best because you would know an entire song and be able to sing along immediately. As I got older, albums gave way to cassettes, then CDs.
Then came concert tickets!
I cannot hear Bruce Springsteen’s “Santa Claus is Coming to Town” without thinking of the first time I heard him sing it – November, 1984. It was also the first time I had seen Bruce live in concert and that song closed the show. Even though everyone in the crowd should have been spent after the four hour show, “Santa Claus is Coming to Town” just re-energized the full house. There was very defined time line – those events before that show, and those events that occurred after that show. Although I had been to live shows before that, all that came after would be compared to Bruce Springsteen live. It’s a high bar, but one that most artists meet in their own way.
Another special show was taking our family friend to see Barry Manilow. Her name was Mary Louise Weaver and she could not have been a bigger Barry fan. She was speechless, teary-eyed, smiling and singing – mostly simultaneously. She knew all of his music and had the best time. I was so happy to witness her happiness.
I am now a grown up with grown children, but I still experience the same excitement when I hear a song from any time in my life. Fortunately, all three of my kids have grown up loving music, so my husband and I did something right. We have a great time listening to different genres and attending different shows. I love to sing at the top of my lungs driving in the car, around the house, or at any concert I am attending. Music is a great unifier and sharing music is a gift that we can all give each other.
Now, it’s time to fire up the turntable for that Partridge Family album.
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It starts with a simple song and summertime in Michigan. The Apple TV is a brand new invention, and Dad is experimenting with playing music through his newest gadget from Best Buy. After several minutes of futzing, the silhouette of a giant mango tree against a backdrop of mustard yellow appears on the screen. The descending bass line of “Better Together” invites me to take a deep breath. I do. I sink deeper into the cushions of the living room couch and unwind for the first time Jack Johnson serves me a little slice of life. I stole the entirety of In Between Dreams from my dad’s computer. This was pre- streaming. Buying entire albums used up Grandma’s gift cards pretty quickly, so you learned how to be handy with other peoples libraries and the “Burn to CD” function in iTunes. Soon after I downloaded the album, it became the soundtrack of my life. Even when I wasn’t really listening, I’d just have it playing somewhere in the background. I’d find new music and start listening to some other stuff, but eventually find myself putting it on again and again. Every few months or so I’d claim a new favorite song, discovering something I hadn’t noticed before.
Jack Johnson was one of the first songwriters I heard that tackled abstract concepts in a way that really resonated with me. The songs everyone knows him by – “Better Together” and “Banana Pancakes” – were definitely the gateway drugs. But as I listened more, things started to change. Songs like “Never Know,” “Breakdown,” or “If I Could” introduced some really rich lyrical content and difficult life questions that I’d yet to be exposed to. For example, “If I Could” starts with the verse, “A brand new baby was born yesterday just in time / Papa cried, baby cried, said ‘Your tears are like mine’ / I heard some words from a friend on the phone that didn’t sound so good / The doctor gave him two weeks to live / I’d give him more if I could”. He unpacks messy aspects of life like death, love or even mundanity with such gentleness and keen observation – it really sets the stage for listeners to empathize, which I love. Beyond that, the succinct storytelling in songs like “Do You Remember” or “Constellations” inspired me to capture that same kind specificity of imagery in my own writing.
I must’ve been around fourteen when I’d listened to the record for the first time. I grew up listening to mainstream pop, The Beatles, and a whole lotta country radio, mostly because it was easy access. In Between Dreams was the first record I digested as a whole. The first record I felt I could claim as my own. It became part of my identity, in a way. Whenever I come back to his music, it brings back all these different versions of myself – almost like a musical reminder of who I am and where I came from.
I grew up in a small town surrounded by a lot of green open space. Living in LA – getting used to a desert climate and the over-development of land – has been a somewhat difficult adjustment for me. Jack Johnson’s music and especially In Between Dreams utilize a lot
of nature imagery and metaphor in the lyric. I listen to his songs, and I feel the way being in nature makes me feel – centered and more myself. I can always count on a little Jack Johnson to bring me back to Earth, both literally and figuratively. It’s my own little musical state park, so to speak – no matter where I am.
I’ve heard a lot of people refer to Jack Johnson as being “easy listening,” usually with a certain amount of disdain in their voices. Honestly, I get it. For the average touch-and-go listener, he’s this soft-spoken, happy-go-lucky dude from Hawaii who plays acoustic guitar and sings about banana pancakes. But for me, he’s a modest voice, pioneer of asking difficult questions, and vigilant observer of the most important simple things. Like Papa’s translations of the stories across the sky. Or sepia-tone lovin. Or resolve is just a concept that’s as dead as the leaves. I could go on for days. He’s the most underrated lyricist of our time (in my own very humble opinion, of course). And that’s my first record story.
